This weeks woodworking project I show you how to break down a wood
pallet then take the wood from it and build a beautiful pallet wood
coffee table! This table is a very simple design and a lot of fun to
make! Continue reading down below :)

Creating the Original Pallet Wood Coffee Table

Aloha guys, thanks for checking out this weeks project on
BeachBumLivin where on this week I'm going to show you how I turn this pile of
pallets into this cool looking pallet wood coffee table. So, come check it out
with me. All right, so I'm out looking for pallets right now and they're
actually really easy to find. I never really paid attention to them before but
now that I'm looking for pallets I notice they're everywhere. A lot of times
I'll just go behind a business where their dumpsters are and that’s where
they'll usually have a stack of them that they want to get rid of. They usually
don't need them or they have a couple broken boards on them so they are not
able to use them. So they are actually really easy to find and I'm looking for
some of the older looking ones. I don't want the ones that are brand new
looking because to me they won't look as good when I'm building the furniture. So
that's what I'm doing and hopefully I can find some really good ones here. All
right, here's a spot I've found some pallets before and here's what I'm talking
about back here in the back of these buildings they'll have where they will
throw some of their busted ones and this is exactly what I'm looking for, some
of this older wood. This will look really good once it's cleaned up. So I'm
going to go ahead and collect these, take them home, and start breaking them
down.

All right, I've got the pallets back and the first thing I want to do is
go ahead and break these down into individual boards. I've pretty much found
there is two ways to go about this. You can either use this a sawzall, if you
have one. What I'll do is go behind the boards sawing the nails in half, which
will release these top boards that I'm going to use to build the furniture from,
these two by four braces that are in the middle. If you don't have one of those
it's no big deal. You can use a hammer and anything you have like a pry bar or
chisel to get under these boards to be able to pry them away from those two by
fours. That's two options and I'll show you both and you can see which one you
like better. So that's what I'm doing next is going to break these down. This
is the biggest pain to using pallets to build furniture is the breaking them apart. All
right, I got all the boards disassembled and here's the main difference between
cutting them off or prying them off. You can see that when I cut them off the
boards the nails are cut flush. I want to be able to get these out because I
plan on planing these boards to give them a nice look. I'm going to use one of
these pin things (nail punch) and from the backside just go ahead and hammer them
to get them to pry up a little bit. It pushes it through to where you can get
the hammer under it. They are already cut real small so they are very easy to
pry out. So as you can see the other boards that were pried up you can see the
nails sticking through all the way intact. It's really easy to just go ahead and
hammer these out. You can then pull them out really easy. So that's the two
different ways. They both accomplish the same thing but it's just a matter of, it
seems like cutting them off they come off a lot quicker but as far as getting
the nails out it might be a little more time consuming using one of these (nail
punch).

All right, so I've got all the boards cleaned up, all the nails or
staples and anything like that basically completely clean of any metal. The
next thing I'm going to do is skim off a thin layer off the top of the boards
just to bring out the wood grain. They gotten kind of dingy looking but you can
use them just like this and it still look pretty cool. I just want to freshen
the boards up a bit so I'm going to use this power planer and lightly go over
it. All right, I'm done planing all the wood and I think they all turned out
really good. They have a really nice look to them.

The next thing I'm doing is I'm actually, here's the standard
piece of wood that comes off a pallet, for me and the project I'm doing for the
coffee table with the chevron on the top I think these are a little to thick as
far as the width goes. I want to get a little more wood on the top of my coffee
tables so what I'm actually going to do is rip these and trim them down so
they're a little thinner so that I can fit more the pieces of wood onto the
coffee table and you'll see in a little while what I'm talking about.

All
right, I just finished cutting all the pallet boards down to the width I was
wanting. I cut them down to two and a half inches. I cut down the piece of
plywood to the dimensions of the coffee table top I'm building which is two
foot by four foot. This is just regular plywood. It's going to serve as the
base to the pallet boards I put on just to give it a sturdy support system. So
I have this cut down and I went ahead and drew a centerline right down the
middle to kind of give me a reference point. What I'm doing next is cutting the
pallet board ends with a forty five-degree angle and what its going to do is with
this line I've drawn as a reference point, I'm just going to have these on
there like that right down the center and you can see how it's going to form this
chevron look. I'm going to continue all the way down with his pattern. So I've
got the boards cut and now I'm going to start attaching it to the plywood.

All
right, so I've finished up the top and as you can see it's starting to turn out
really cool. I think it looks really rustic and neat looking. With the chevron
pattern I think it looks really neat. All I did was once I finished attaching
the pallet boards to the piece of plywood I went around and cut off all the
excess with the circular saw. It left it with a rough edge so I wanted to frame
the top of the coffee table. I used a one by two and then attached it. As you
can see it gives it a cleaner edge. I think it really cleans it up a little
bit. That was the last thing I did. The top is done and now I just need to
build the base.

All right, I've finished assembling the base and it went
together really easy. So all I really have left to do is attach the base to the
top. I'm going to use the Kreg Jig and drill some pocket holes along the base and
then just attach it to the top. It should be really simple and that should be
the last thing as far as the assembling this coffee table.

All right, I'm done
with the pallet wood coffee table and as you can see I think it turned out
really cool. It was pretty easy project; the hardest part was probably breaking
down the pallets and cleaning the wood up. That was by far the most time
consuming part because once I had all the wood clean and cut and everything, it
was really easy to put together actually. All I did was I looked on the Internet
to get a common dimension for a coffee table because I really wasn't sure. I've
never built one of these before and I didn't have any kind of plans to go by or
anything like that. So I looked it up and it seemed like a two foot by four
foot by about sixteen inches tall was a pretty common dimension. So that's what
I went with and that's what I cut down my plywood down into was a two by four
foot. Once I had that down it was really easy to go ahead and start putting the
pieces of pallet wood on top and everything. Once I framed it out the bottom
was actually pretty easy and you can see all I did was use the leftover two by
fours that are the center parts of the pallet that the pallet wood that I use
for the top is attached to. I just left it natural you know I didn't change
anything to it. I cut it down a little on the ends just to fit the dimensions I
was using for the base but other than that I left it natural I had some four by
four post still left over from when I had collected all that driftwood from the
beach. That worked out nicely but overall it was really easy. I mean it’s
really something you guys at home could do. I'm actually done building it but I’m
not quite done yet. I think I want to add some color but it's not going to be
in this video. You'll have to check out my next video because what I plan on
doing is leaving the top natural because it looks awesome just the way it is so
I don't want to mess with that but the bottom I want to add some color. So what
I plan on doing is adding a little bit of stain to darken the wood up and then
put a cool color on top. You'll have to check out my next video to find out how
I do that. I appreciate you guys checking out BeachBumLivin. I appreciate you
guys subscribing. If you like the video remember like it. I guess I see you
guys on the next video where I put a little color into this pallet wood coffee
table. See you guys next time!

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